Success and the Achievement Gap

Would you believe that most Canadian hockey stars are born in January, February, or March? That Robert Oppenheimer, the head of the Manhattan Project, tried to poison one of his professors? Or, that Bill Gates credits much of his success to luck? These are just three of the intriguing stories of Malcolm Gladwell's new bestseller Outliers: The Story of Success.

Gladwell is convincing in his thesis, that success is much more than intelligence and hard work. He doesn't deny the importance of these attributes but identifies other variables like when, where, and how you were born. For example, in the junior Canadian hockey league, the cut-off age for moving from one level to the next is January 1st. A child born early in the year is going to be stronger and more mature than one born later. Because there are also levels within levels, the months-older, stronger players are moved up to a higher skill level within their age group. At higher skill levels, players learn better skills and so on and so on.

Why was Robert Oppenheimer chosen to head the Manhattan Project which produced the first atomic bomb? After all, 20 years earlier he tried to poison one of his professors. Gladwell says that because Oppenheimer was from a refined, elite family his abhorrent act was overlooked.

And what about Bill Gates? Another example of privilege. In 1968, Bill Gates was in the 8th grade when his elite private school purchased a computer. At a time when most colleges didn't have computers, Gates and his friends logged a lot of hours learning programming.

Gladwell also draws some conclusions about education in the United States. He believes that the length of our school year is one reason that American kids do so poorly in math when compared to other students. On a math test given around the world, twelfth-graders were asked how many of the questions covered material they had already learned. The Japanese said 92%. The American students said 54%. The Japanese go to school about sixty days more than Americans each year. Over a 12-year period, that's a lot more math.

Is summer vacation really too long? When it comes to the achievement gap between the "haves" and the "have-nots," Gladwell shares some startling statistics. The city of Baltimore began giving the California Achievement Test in reading not just at the end of each school year, but also in September when school begins. During the school year, the first through fifth graders on "free or reduced meals" scored and progressed equally with other students. However, when Baltimore begin testing again in the fall, the results were devastating. The poor kids had fallen behind by four points while the wealthiest kids test scores jumped 15 points. The difference--summer vacation. While the wealthiest kids were reading their own books, going to summer camps, etc., the poorer kids were spending boring days in front of the television.

What does this mean for us as educators? David Levin, the co-founder of the KIPP (Knowledge is Power Program) charter schools, believes that it means more school time for the disadvantaged. KIPP kids like Marita, a 5th grader in the South Bronx, go to school for ten hours a day, do two or more hours of homework a night, go to school some Saturdays as well as an extra month in the summer. The results--only 16% of kids in other South Bronx schools are performing at grade level in math. By the end of 8th grade, the KIPP kids are at 84%.

Applying Gladwell's findings to closing the achievement gap in education is far too simplistic, but the book can help us rethink and expand on ways to succeed in our attempts.

American Apartheid

In his book Ordinary Resurrections: Children in the Years of Hope (2000), educator and activist, Jonathan Kozol recalls the time that he spent in the Mott Haven section of South Bronx. The students were virtually all black and Hispanic. In the book, Kozol expresses a faint sense of hope rarely found in his works. He describes a school population where many students have asthma because of the inordinate number of garbage dumps in the area. Knowing someone with AIDS is common. In spite of a system that he labels an “apartheid education,” he praises the after-school program held at a neighborhood church.

Jonathan Kozol talks with a student at St. Ann's Church in New York City's South Bronx.

Five years later, in the Harper’s article, “Still Separate, Still Unequal: America's Educational Apartheid,” he describes a return to hopelessness and an educational system that is taking a backward glance.

Kozol describes the physical environments that ignore the basic needs of students. Insufficient bathroom facilities, dirty halls and classrooms, and too few desks and tables barely fulfill the needs on the bottom rung of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs; physiological needs like thirst, hunger, and bodily comfort must be addressed before any other growth can take place.

Even if the basic needs were met in the schools that Kozol describes, it still would be far from making headway in the education of their children. The inequities in the budgets and salaries of the rich and poor schools of New York City are devastating. The bleak desperation of the school personnel, parents, and students in the poor districts can only be described as demoralizing.

The attitudes of the faculty and students in these schools seem only fitting for the situation. When Kozol interviewed students at MLK High School, one 16-year-old girl stated that “If people in New York woke up one day and learned that we had gone, had simply died or left for somewhere else . . . they would be relieved.”

Most of the students in my school would not share this feeling. However, I just can’t shake the notion that with all that we provide our kids, I have no doubt that we have students who feel just as hopeless and invisible as those in the article. I’m sure we have some students who believe that the school would be “relieved” if he or she just disappeared. Sadly enough, in some cases, they would be right.

The teachers described in the article seem to represent the attitudes of teachers everywhere. All schools have expert teachers that are passionate, resilient, and hopeful. Most schools also have teachers that are lazy, disconnected, unprepared, and out of their element. The extremes in teachers' attitudes are only magnified in Kozol's schools.

No Walls

I titled this blog "Beyond Bindings" because it describes the changing status of school library media centers today. It is one of the most exciting evolutions happening in education. The library media center has morphed into a center for acquiring information in myriad forms. Today's library media specialist can now hold the key to a world beyond the walls of the library.

However, before we look further into the current changes, let's go back a bit to a time when a specific technological event brought about the first sea change in school libraries. In 1957 the Soviet Union surprised the world when it launched a little satellite called "Sputnik." Of course, not to be outdone, the United States recognized the challenge, accepted it, and the space race was off and running. First, we needed to prepare our best and brightest for success in orbit. Money was infused into our public schools to update our library collections to educate the future scientists that would take us to the moon and beyond. Check any school library's collection that has not been properly weeded, and you will find a remarkable number of titles from the 1960s.

Outer space is fine, but the 21st-century school library exposes us to a boundless digital world. Online databases provide students with limitless sources for research. With inter-library loan, hard copies, e-books, movies, music, and other resources are available to serve the individual needs of our students.

Perhaps one of the most dynamic changes is the phenomenon known as Library 2.0. Like Web 2.0, Library 2.0 moves us from a passive use of the internet into an interactive environment. Wikis, blogs, podcasts, You Tube, and digital stories are some of the products that result when we use 2.0 technology. Using these 2.0 tools can bring a whole new meaning to authentic learning. Using these tools for their ultimate purpose, requires critical thinking and creativity. Students write with a sense of immediacy for a real audience. Using these tools can help our students move up Bloom's pyramid. Students learn to question, and create new knowledge.

The 21st-century library media center goes way beyond the bindings of books on the library shelves. Today's library media specialist is the guide and facilitator through a vast digital world of limitless possibilities.

Check out this link about Library 2.0
http://library20.ning.com/